Launch: New Sync Client for BlackBerry

The Sync client for BlackBerry was the first mobile to desktop synchronization client we developed in-house almost entirely from scratch. When we started more than a year ago, we’d just finished launching Sync for Outlook, our first sync service. We learned a lot from the project and were excited to do something new. But we made one critical mistake in the first versions: we re-invented the display from scratch. After we launched Sync for Windows Mobile, the BlackBerry client stood out as being very different from our other clients.
We’ve gone back to fix that, plus re-engineered the whole project to bring you a more unified look and feel. In the process, we went back through all our code and rethought everything to be more maintainable. The end result is a sync client that looks totally new and fresh from all directions – the display and the code.
We also wanted to tackle the problem of how to better support our mobile sync clients. The most painful part of supporting sync is that it runs on your phone and not on our servers. And, we can’t look at your phone to find out what’s wrong. Getting the logs from the client is the only way to know what’s going on. Most clients are fairly simple. But for the BlackBerry, it’s about 12 painful steps and very easy to do a step wrong or miss it entirely. The bottom line: The process can be frustrating for everyone involved. Now, it’s a one-click process to submit sync logs from your phone! If you encounter an error, just select “Send Logs” from the menu, and you’ll receive a confirmation email within seconds giving you further instructions.
So, if you’re a user of Sync for BlackBerry, today you’ll be able to enjoy a new display with a look and feel similar to Sync for Outlook or Sync for Windows Mobile. And if you’re a customer interested in getting started with Sync for the first time we can show you how. It’s also easier than ever to get help for any problems you have a long the way. If you’re a curious developer, as always our sync clients are open source. Feel free to look at the new, better organized code.
Feedback? Email mobile-sync [at] mailtrust.com

About the Author

This is a post written and contributed by
Lizetta Staplefoote.

Lizetta Staplefoote is a Rackspace Marketing Copywriter with a decade of experience writing about small business challenges for healthcare, real estate, and technology. Her passion is researching and writing about the impact of cloud computing. When she's not wordsmithing, she enjoys hanging out with her sons, exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains, and feeding her music addiction.